


Learning to Trust

by IRL_Nagito



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types
Genre: Atypical Relationship, Comfort, Demibeasts, Demidragon Komaeda Nagito, Demiwolf Pekoyama Peko, Developing Relationship, Fluff, Happy Ending, Hybrids, M/M, Non-Consensual Body Modification, Other, Past Abuse, Past Violence, Recovery, Trauma, Trust Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-22
Updated: 2020-02-22
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:24:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22840168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IRL_Nagito/pseuds/IRL_Nagito
Summary: Hajime Hinata is a writer who makes a living off of his books (and the occasional article when things are tight), but it gets a little lonely sometimes. He’s been considering getting an animal companion, but what he ends up with is... Not what he expected.But he’s not complaining.
Relationships: Hinata Hajime & Komaeda Nagito, Hinata Hajime/Komaeda Nagito
Comments: 7
Kudos: 139





	Learning to Trust

**Author's Note:**

> I know this seems odd but bear with me—   
> Nagito is very much aware of what all is going on, he may not always act like it but he’s very intelligent, it’s just simpler to exist the way he does without thinking too much about things... Trust me I’m Kinnie and I loved being with Hajime like that, I felt Safe, and also the cuddles??? Peak. 
> 
> (But also I’m still very sorry for all the messes I made Hajime I was just a little chaotic—)

Hajime Hinata wasn’t really expecting a knock on his door at ten on a Saturday, especially not a few loud ones in quick succession.

He had been working on his laptop, typing up a quick news report for some extra income, and he hesitantly shut the device and went to the door.

Hajime lived in a fairly peaceful area, with neighbors not too close but not so far away that they wouldn’t be considered neighbors, and none had really visited since he’d first moved in.

A discreet look through the window found Peko Pekoyama’s sharp red eyes staring him down from his front porch along with Fuyuhiko and a man he couldn’t recognize. Her canine ears twitched but the rest of her didn’t move, and Hajime had to admit that she was one of the most intimidating people we had ever met, including other demibeasts.

The brunet quickly opened the door for them, and Fuyuhiko walked right in as if he had been given prior invitation, Peko and the white-haired man following, albeit the latter had to be gently pulled in by his sleeve. He attempted to duck behind Peko upon noticing Hajime, peeking over her shoulder. His eyes were big and grey, and his hair white and fluffy, and Hajime noticed that he had two black horns protruding from his head. 

Another demibeast like Peko then, but what sort?

“Hey, Hajime,” Fuyuhiko started with an odd sort of smile that Hajime wasn’t sure how to take, “You said you’d been thinking about getting a pet or whatever, right? Because you felt lonely, need something to do besides work?”

Squinting with suspicion, Hajime hesitantly replied, “Yeah, I was thinking maybe a cat or a small dog, why? Did you go out and just get me one or something?”

Fuyuhiko shrugged, gestured vaguely with his hands, “Yes and no. Yeah, I’ve got a companion for you, you sad bastard, but no, he’s not a cat or a dog. His name’s Nagito Komaeda, judging from the papers we managed to dig up on him, and he wasn’t being treated very well and needs someone to look after him.”

Hajime blinked, his mouth twisted into a confused frown, and he glanced back at Peko and the unfamiliar man, “So you’re rehoming animals now? Did Gundham rope you into this?”

“No, dumbass,” Fuyuhiko sighed, pointing a finger behind him, “I’m asking you to look after this disaster of a demidragon because he needs someone to take care of him and you said you want something to take care of.”

He wasn’t sure if he heard him right, but Peko abruptly stepped away from the man hiding behind her and pressed her back to the door. Having lost his hiding place, Hajime could see that the man, who he now knew to be Nagito, was indeed a demidragon, though it was hard to tell without the wings characteristic of them. 

A high, whining squeak came from him, and he glanced around at them all for a moment, pleading eyes directed especially at Peko, before he truly looked at Hajime. 

“Spiky,” he said, voice raspy and clumsy and his eyes wide, and Hajime took a hesitant step forward to greet him. Before he could get anywhere near, Nagito made a loud, distressed sound, something like a garbled no, and dropped to all fours, clawed fingertips audible on the hardwood as he took off down the hallway. 

Hajime stared after him for a moment, and then turned back to his friends, “So I said I wanted a pet and you’re giving me a whole person to take care of?”

“Pretty much,” Fuyuhiko affirmed with a nod, before he stepped forward and placed a firm hand on Hajime’s arm, “Look, I mean it when I said he wasn’t in the best state when we found him. Still isn’t. He’s real skittish, so you’ll need to be gentle and patient with him. If you don’t think you can care for him, I can try to find someone else in my Family, but I trust you with this, Hajime.”

The brunet felt horribly conflicted, but he knew in the end that he couldn’t just decline. This house was too big to be alone in anymore, and Fuyuhiko was right that he was looking for something more to care for to help him with his declining motivation. Maybe helping Nagito could be that something.

“Fine,” Hajime sighed, shaking his head and pointing an accusing finger at Fuyuhiko, “but you’re going to have to help me with buying stuff for him. He can’t just wear my clothes all the time, and I’m going to need to set up one of the rooms for him.”

The yakuza laughed, startling Hajime, and before he could ask why, Fuyuhiko patted him on the arm a couple times before finally retracting his hand, “Trust me, it won’t be an issue. I can get some stuff to you when you need it though, just let me know. He’s also pretty comfortable with Peko, demibeast solidarity I guess, so call if he ever seems like he needs it. We’ve got to be going.”

Peko already had the door open for them, and she nodded respectfully to Hajime as Fuyuhiko waved and made his exit, and he soon heard their car pulling away from his house while he closed and relocked his door behind him.

Now he just had to find his new companion, whom he hadn’t heard since he took off into the depths of his house.

Flicking on the lights in the hallway, he heard a small yelp and the scrape of something sharp across carpet, and Hajime sighed with relief knowing that he was still inside. He had a feeling that Nagito wouldn’t do very well on his own outside.

As he started down the hallway, he noticed scraps of fabric on the floor, torn and ragged, that matched the color of what Nagito had been wearing, and he soon became more concerned and his steps faster. 

The brunet peered into the room whose door was slightly ajar, noticing in the low light a spot of paleness in the corner that was most certainly Nagito himself.

He reached to turn on the lights and was greeted with a loud whine, and the sight of Nagito bare and surrounded by torn clothes.

Hajime wasn’t quite sure how to process what was in front of him, overcome with a frantic worry that was characteristic of someone who came across someone in what they thought to be a dire state.

“A-are you okay? Are you alright? Are you hurt?” He blustered, golden-green eyes wide as he approached with hands outstretched and ready to help, but he quickly withdrew whenever Nagito curled up, black-clawed hands over his eyes.

“No, no, no,” he babbled, pale grey tail between his legs and knees drawn to his chest, and Hajime noticed the scars latticed over his skin, some thin and faded and some large and relatively fresh, “No, no, no!” 

Not in the best state when they found him had been an understatement.

Hajime took a stuttering step back and sat down on the floor, both to stop himself from shaking and to put Nagito at ease, and it worked.

Grey-green eyes peaked between spindly fingers after a minute of silence, and Nagito, eyeing Hajime as he did so, drew back up into a sitting position. 

“I’m not going to hurt you,” Hajime told him, and Nagito continued to watch him warily, but seemed to believe that, at least for the moment, Hajime was telling him the truth.

——————

After a few days, Nagito seemed a little more comfortable in the house, and had started to be more active. Hajime could hear him through the wall at night, walking around his room and shuffling blankets and making noises.

He’d started to talk a little more, picking up a few words that he would parrot to himself at times in an almost singsong voice. He seemed to just like the sensation; it wasn’t really clear if he knew what the words meant.

Hajime would also be lying if he said the little chirring and chirping sounds weren’t endearing, but he very much would be if he said he enjoyed the screeching sounds that he occasionally made early in the morning.

There didn’t seem to be a particular reason for it. The first time Hajime heard it, he had panicked with the belief that something was wrong, throwing off his covers (and nearly falling) and darting to open Nagito’s door to check on him.

What he found was Nagito sitting calmly in his nest, a couple blankets piled over his shoulders, and blinking at him with big, grey eyes, before he tilted his head back and made that same draconian shrieking sound that Hajime had heard through the wall. 

Hajime gave the demidragon a long-suffering look and received an oddly focused one in response, expectant and almost calculating, like Nagito knew exactly what was going on in his head. 

The brunet felt a little unsettled by that, but he wasn’t going to be deterred. 

“Do you want food? Is that it?” He asked, and Nagito surprisingly didn’t answer, though Hajime knew for a fact that he knew what that meant. 

“Heat lamp on?” Hajime pointed to it, and received no answer yet again.

“Door open?” He gestured to it, and Nagito tilted his head for a second and then nodded.

Hajime’s sighed, shaking his head with what he reluctantly admitted to be fond exasperation, and left, leaving the door open behind him.

Despite keeping the door of Nagito’s room open for him from then on, he still continued to make that grating sound, loud and sharp, at early hours. 

Hajime checked on him the first couple times to see what he wanted, but Nagito simply quieted and looked at him whenever he entered and asked him what he wanted, and was quiet for the rest of the night after he left.

It lasted for about a week, and then Nagito stopped. 

The first time it didn’t happen, Hajime checked on him anyways, and found him asleep in his pile of blankets and pillows, making a quiet purring-clicking sound whenever he breathed. His tail and feel and fingers twitched every now and then, and he chuffed almost excitedly a couple times, so he must’ve been having a nice dream.

Hajime left him quietly, and slept soundly for the first time in a while, at least until Nagito woke him up by tapping claws at his door and calling for breakfast.

——————

Hajime had been hesitant at first, knowing Nagito's aversion to touch, but after catching the demidragon sticking his hand in Hajime’s cups of water when left unattended and meagerly attempting to clean himself with it, Hajime knew it was time to try to bathe him.

It was a little tricky, herding him to the bathroom without touching him and sending him into a panic, but he managed to coax Nagito in with some dried strawberry slices. 

While he was occupied with his snack, Hajime closed the door and got out a towel and turned on the shower, sticking a hand under the spray to check the temperature as he adjusted it.

It was such an insignificant action that it startled him into jumping and nearly tripping over the rim of the tub when Nagito made a sudden, whining cry and scrambled back to press against the wall, food forgotten on the floor.

Hajime quickly turned the water back off and turned towards Nagito, crouching down to the floor so as to not tower over him and scare him more, as Peko had suggested him to do whenever something caused a reaction like this.

“Nagi, Nagi hey, Nagi, shh,” Hajime soothed, careful to keep his voice soft and steady, “It’s okay, it’s okay, you don’t want the shower, right? It’s okay, you’re okay.”

Nagito lowered his hands from where they had been covering his eyes, and Hajime could see that there were tears, and that made him feel absolutely horrible.

“I’m sorry, no shower, got it,” he assured, and Nagito blinked at him, seeming to understand, though he was still shaking a little.

“...You do still get to get washed off though,” Hajime told him with no small measure of apology, and Nagito warbled understandingly, so he continued, “Would you be alright with a bath?”

The brunet reached back tapped the spigot as he asked, and Nagito eyed it warily for a moment before nodding jerkily. Hajime blindly reached up to turn it on, and Nagito flinched, but he didn’t recoil as violently as he had before.

It made Hajime wonder what had happened to make him so scared of things as simple as this, but, at the same time, the possibilities made him a little sick.

Lost in his thoughts as he was, he was snapped back into the present by a splash that got the back of his shirt fairly wet, sticking to his skin.

Hajime turned around to see Nagito in the water, lowering himself into its warmth with a contented trilling sound that brought a smile to Hajime’s lips.

He offered Nagito a bottle of three-in-one, bought especially for him, and mimed what to do with it after squeezing some into his palm for him, the demidragon following his instructions with endearing focus. 

Hajime directed him to wash his hair first, and then his body, and Nagito seemed to feel much better and to have calmed down a lot by the time he was out and Hajime draped a towel over his soaking wet head teasingly, an exaggerated squeak and a shaking of water everywhere given in reply. 

——————

After a couple months, Nagito was much more comfortable with him. He began to speak more beyond parroting, using words that actually had meaning in the context. (Saying “warm” when Hajime asked how he was in his nest of blankets one afternoon and “soft” when Hajime asked him what he thought of the large new pillow he had gotten for him.)

However, he seemed to be a bit bored. The novelty of Hajime’s house had worn off, and he spent much of his time napping in his room or on the couch or making a racket or a mess.

At the moment, he was doing the latter, surrounded by and partially under the cushions and pillows that he had dragged from the couch, occasionally chirring-clicking from underneath them.

Hajime sat on the one chair that had escaped the demidragon’s rampage, laptop perched on his legs as he tapped out the latest page of his new novel. It was coming along decently, and he actually felt pretty good about it. 

Focusing on writing could be an issue, however, with Nagito around. 

The brunet couldn’t help glancing up at him occasionally, finding his method of entertaining himself ridiculously cute and pretty hilarious. All he could see of him from under his pile was his grey tail flicking and a bit of his fluffy hair.

“Hey, Nagi,” Hajime clicked his tongue a couple times to get his attention, and Nagito sprang up from his mass of damage, eyes bright and curious and hair wilder than usual.

Hajime laughed for a moment, then continued, “Do you want to play a game?”

Nagito’s eyes narrowed for a moment, darting to the side, before something clicked and he nodded, chirring, crawling across the cushions to sit at Hajime’s feet.

He closed his laptop and put it to the side and then leaned down to get closer to Nagito’s level, using his hands to gesture as he explained, “Alright, have you ever heard of Hide and Seek? I’ll go hide somewhere in the house, and you’ll go find me, and then you’ll go hide, and I’ll find you, and then I’ll hide again. Does that sound fun?”

The demidragon chirped and bobbed his head happily, and Hajime chuckled and gently shushed him, “Alright, alright, ready? Stay here and cover your eyes. When I call you, come find me!”

Nagito blinked at him for a moment, before nodding, and lifting his clawed hands to his eyes, placing his palms over them.

Hajime left the room as quietly as he could, heading down the hallway and to his study. It was a little difficult to fit himself under the desk and pull the chair close enough that it looked like it was still under, but it was worth it for a good hiding place.

Clicking his tongue, Hajime signaled the start of the game, “Nagi, come on!”

A very loud and very excited chirr met his ears, and thumping and skittering came from elsewhere in the house as his companion set off.

He could hear Nagito as he checked the rooms, the occasional curious warbling heard muffled from his hiding spot.

When the door to his study creaked open, and a clear chirp met his ears, Hajime knew that he was about to be discovered. 

The brunet found himself to be right, as a horned head of white hair turned the corner and saw him, big eyes bright and grin toothy as Nagito made a loud purring-squeaking sound in cheerful celebration.

With a bright laugh, Hajime smiled back, and found himself thankful in the back of his mind that he could still have little moments like this in his life.

——————

Nagito had a habit of sitting at the windows, Hajime noticed about four months later, whenever warmth had truly set in. 

When the sunlight streamed in, Hajime could find him sprawled across the floor with the curtains pulled aside, basking in the light and grumbling and rolling when it moved.

He had a heat lamp, but Hajime eventually recalled that it was likely that he’d never truly seen the sun before the Kuzuryuu clan’s rescue, and he couldn’t help but feel sad. It wasn’t pity, he was past that; it was more like sympathy, and he wanted to indulge Nagito in the things he had missed.

It took Hajime a little while and a few calls with Fuyuhiko and the company he had recommended, but he eventually had some sturdy, high fence around his back yard, thick and tall to make sure no one could see Nagito.

(He wasn’t about to wrestle the demidragon into clothes, after all.)

Hajime opened the back door and called for Nagito, laughing when his companion excitedly scrambled out of his room with a flurry of chirring and met him where he waited.

“Want to go outside?” The brunet offered, and Nagito froze, looking outside and then up at Hajime and then back outside again, “You can if you want to, I might be able to get a nice big rock for you to sun on if you want one, and I’ve kind of been considering a pool for a while now anyways.”

The demidragon looked back up at him one last time before reaching out and placing a hesitant hand on the grass outside, fingers sinking between the green blades as an odd sound rumbled in his throat.

Within a second, he was off, dashing into the yard and winding around the few trees and running the perimeter of the makeshift enclosure before rolling excitedly onto his back and wriggling on the grass, apparently just enjoying the feeling.

Hajime couldn’t help but laugh at the sight, a light feeling in his chest at seeing Nagito so cheerful. He was like that most of the time, yes, but this was different. 

A color caught his eye, a splash of yellow, and he noticed a little dandelion growing not far from him. He stooped down a picked it delicately between his fingers, and called out to Nagito with a smile, “Hey, Nagi, take a look at this!”

Nagito soon bounded over, sitting in the grass with his tail shifting behind him, still feeling the grass with excitement. 

Hajime held out the flower to him, and Nagito, used to being given treats like that, nearly leaned forward to bite it, but the brunet pulled it back and chuckled, “No, no, it’s not a treat, just look at it. Do you think it’s pretty?”

The demidragon stared at it for a moment, before he reached up, fingers brushing Hajime’s as he took the stem into his own hands. He didn’t flinch, didn’t panic, even initiated the contact himself. 

Hajime felt like everything clicked into place, warm and simple.

Nagito looked at the flower and then Hajime, tilting his head for a moment, before he stood.

That startled Hajime quite a bit, as he rarely saw Nagito stand on two legs for anything (other than getting into things, of course), and he wasn’t quite sure how to react as Nagito put the flower haphazardly in his spiky hair and then dropped back to the ground.

He pressed his head up against Hajime’s hand with a murmur of “warm,” and Hajime let his fingers sink into white hair that was even softer than he’d imagined. When Nagito purred loudly as he carefully scratched him behind his horns, Hajime couldn’t hold back a grin.


End file.
